A caged panther

Solitude, deep reflection, and contemplation bring a quality to creativity that has been called ‘inseeing’ – in other words getting right to the heart of the subject, in touch and with deep empathy. Thomas Merton describes this inseeing as a particular way of looking, and a form of contemplation in itself. Inseeing involves an ‘inner event in the person who sees, and it takes place in this encounter with something else; it’s not just a subjective thing.’

In one talk to the novices, (transcribed by Paul Pearson), Thomas Merton speaks of the way Rilke gets into the very center of the thing he is describing. Taking a dog as an example, he says this inseeing involves getting into:

‘… the dog’s very centre, the point from where it begins to be a dog, the place in which, in it, where God, as it were, would have sat down for a moment when the dog was finished in order to watch it under the influence of its first embarrassments and inspirations and to know that it was good. that nothing was lacking, that it could not have been made better.’

This contact with reality, Merton goes on to say, is essential to the spiritual life as God is mediated through other things in this life, through reality, through creation. ‘This encounter with reality reveals to us our own existence, ourselves and the meaning of our own life and the direction of our own life.’

One of Rilke’s poems that Merton analyses is ‘The Panther’ about a panther trapped behind bars as part of an exhibition in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly—. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

The poem, not conventionally religious, offers much about the deep empathy and inseeing. Rilke has given the creature his complete attention. It’s not just subjective experience about seeing a trapped animal, and not just an objective description, but what Merton describes as ‘a new creation’ reflecting ‘the vital encounter of the poet and the panther.’ Somewhere in it is the essence of the panther. ‘

‘Giving another being our full attention becomes an act of deference and respect to that which we might otherwise seek to objectify and control. It is a first step toward a contemplative relationship with the world.’